Rapid Arctic warming since 2000 may be reshaping and rerouting the narrow current of high winds across the Northern Hemisphere known as the jet stream, forcing it to act like a giant stop light at 30,000 feet. This leads to stalled and prolonged weather systems that can bring deadly extreme heat and rainfall events, a new study has found…Jennifer Francis, a researcher at Rutgers University who first proposed the hypothesis that Arctic warming is altering the jet stream, told Mashable the new paper “is a big step forward in understanding how rapid Arctic warming affects the large-scale atmospheric circulation, and the types of extremes that will likely occur more often as global warming continues unabated.”

A warming Arctic could lead to fewer extreme cold fall and winter events in the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia, according to a study published Sunday. This runs contrary to what some scientists have been saying in recent years, as research on the conn…

The Sangeang Api volcano in Indonesia began erupting on May 30, vaulting ash, along with tiny particles known as volcanic sulfur aerosols, as high as 65,000 feet into the stratosphere. Dramatic images from the eruption show the mountain exploding like a mushroom cloud…This effect can theoretically offset some of the influence of manmade greenhouse gases, which trap heat inside the atmosphere and warm the planet. But Alan Robock, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a longtime researcher on volcanic influences on the climate, told Mashable that neither the Sangeang Api eruption nor a previous one at Mt. Semeru, also in Indonesia, put enough sulfur into the stratosphere “to have any climate effect, even like the ones of the past decade.”

The United States had its most unusual weather week of the year to date, with a massive, slow-moving storm system spawning dozens of killer tornadoes, generating widespread flooding and even whipping up hurricane force winds amid blinding dust in the G…